“All test compounds caused the same qualitative effects on estrogen receptor and androgen receptor activity, and most of the alternatives exhibited potencies within the same range as BPA,” said the researchers.

They said other studies have found BPS in canned soft drinks and BPB in canned tomatoes, drinks and beers.

Findings show that bisphenol B, E, F, S and 4-cumylphenol have similar potential to cause endocrine disruption.

Anna Kjerstine Rosenmai, from the division of Toxicology and Risk Assessment at NFI, said the safety of any alternative needs to be considered before it is used.

“If the compounds are of a similar structure you might suspect the same effect but you cannot be sure and sometimes you get surprised so we wanted to see whether there were similar effects,” she told FoodQualityNews.com.

“We wanted to investigate similar compounds but varied a bit to represent different chemical structures, like a longer chain in the middle of the compound to see if that made a difference.

“We would like to investigate other end points and other compounds that are not BPA analogues, like other chemicals that may be present in food packaging materials.”

Validation step

Rosenmai added that next steps could include validation in animal studies.

“I would like to extend the testing to other relevant cell-based toxicological studies or animal studies because there are not necessarily similar effects in an animal model,” she said.

“We want to urge the need for finding safer alternatives and to give further awareness to take safety into consideration before alternatives are chosen.”

The toxicological study used seven in vitro assays and QSAR modelling.